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Why US Balks at Accord on Children’s Rights

November 21, 2014

With its powerful political-media apparatus, America’s right wing can create hysteria over pretty much anything, even something as innocuous as a U.N. agreement on the rights of children, leaving the U.S. as one of only three countries not to ratify it a quarter century later, writes Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria

We have just past the 25th anniversary of the adoption by the U.N. General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It may come as a shock to many Americans to learn that the three rogue nations in the world that have refused to ratify this no-brainer convention are Somalia, the United States and South Sudan (which just became a nation in 2011).

To put the holdouts in further perspective, North Korea ratified the convention in 1990.

While the United States promotes what it does for children around the world, it has failed to ratify a United Nations’ convention on protecting children’s rights at home. In this photo, Afghan children await school supplies from Allied forces at Sozo School in Kabul. (French navy photo by Master Petty Officer Valverde)

The convention sets out the legal requirements for the world to protect its most vulnerable citizens. According to UNICEF, it “spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere without discrimination have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life. The convention protects children’s rights by setting standards in health care, education and legal, civil and social services.”

The convention clearly spells out the rights of children in criminal cases. “No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment… The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time,” it says.

If you want to know what the consequences are for American children of the U.S. government not ratifying this convention, watch the film “Kids for Cash,” written, produced and directed by Robert May. The film masterfully tells the devastating story of two Pennsylvania judges who sentenced 3,000 children to jail for offenses as minor as shooting spitballs, getting into a schoolyard fight or creating a spoof MySpace page.

The two judges were helping fill up a private prison. Judge Mark Ciavarella is serving 28 years in jail and Judge Michael Conahan 17 years for financial crimes related to payments of $3 million they received from a developer who built a private prison where the judges sent the convicted children for years at a time.

The film, but not the state, puts on trial the so-called “zero-tolerance policy” that shackles and jails juveniles for years for petty misconduct, deeds that in years past would be punished by after-school detention for an afternoon. It harrowingly focuses on how five children suffered at the hands of these judges, leading one to drug abuse and another to his death.

The film posits that the “zero-tolerance policy” is a reaction to Columbine and other school massacres. The policy takes the place of stronger gun control laws and is a clear violation of the convention’s prohibition against “degrading treatment” of children, and of its requirement that imprisonment “be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”

Combined with the militarization of local police across the country and intrusive National Security Agency surveillance, “zero tolerance” contributes to a growing police-state mentality in the U.S. The film also shows how the children and their parents were intimidated into waiving their right to a lawyer, another cornerstone of the convention.

There are 1.1 million children behind bars around the world, according to Kerry Neal, a child protection specialist at UNICEF. The U.S. imprisons as many as 70,000 children a day. The majority of children in detention have not committed serious offenses, Neal says.

“We should remember that committing at least one non-serious offense during adolescence can be considered ‘normal’. Studies all over the world consistently indicate that 70 percent to 80 percent of children have committed at least one – usually petty offense,” he said.

“A significant number have not even committed a minor criminal offense and are deprived of their liberty for what are called ‘status offenses’ such as dropping out of school, running away from home and alcohol use,” said Neal. “Status offenses are not considered criminal offenses when committed by adults, but these children’s cases are often processed through justice systems designed for adults that are not adapted to children’s rights and specific needs.”

The convention the U.S. rejects that would protect these children was negotiated over ten years with substantial input from both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. They contributed seven articles that came directly from the U.S. Constitution. Five and a half years after its adoption on Nov. 20, 1989, Madeleine Albright, the then U.S. ambassador to the U.N., signed it for the United States.

Right-wing fringe groups immediately screamed bloody murder, claiming falsely that it would outlaw corporal punishment and otherwise have the state impose itself on parenting. Then Sen. Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina, called the convention “a bag of worms.” It was typical American parochialism: a country living in a world of its own but trying to dominate the rest of the world, while shielding itself from international law.

The conservative Heritage Foundation said: “Although not originally promoted as an entity that would become involved in actively seeking to shape member states’ domestic policies, the U.N. has become increasingly intrusive in these arenas.” Heritage said the convention raised questions about “sovereign jurisdiction, over domestic policymaking.”

Article 5 of the convention says governments must respect “the rights, responsibilities, and duties of parents” to raise their children. Other U.S. groups, like the Girl Scouts and the Kiwanis support ratification.

Though his administration signed it, President Bill Clinton never pushed the Senate for ratification. Nor did George W. Bush. At a debate on youth issues a month before the 2008 election, candidate Barack Obama said: “It’s embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land. I will review this and other treaties to ensure the United States resumes its global leadership in human rights.” (At the time, South Sudan was not yet an independent nation.)

Obama has not acted, despite this campaign pledge, losing the opportunity of the anniversary and the last six weeks of Democratic rule in the Senate to push for ratification. It seems clear the Obama administration does not want to waste political capital on it.

The U.S. kept a very low profile around the U.N. in regard to the anniversary. Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador and a vocal champion of human rights in an earlier life, hasn’t said a word about it, though people at the U.N. made speeches all day about the convention.

To make matters worse, Power gave a speech on Nov. 19 at a Save the Children event and never once mentioned the convention. The U.S. mission ignored a request from me to speak to a U.S. official about it.

Some U.S. officials have previously argued that U.S. ratification is unnecessary because U.S. law has caught up with the conventions’ provisions over the past 25 years. For example in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Roper v. Simmons case made it unconstitutional to execute prisoners who are younger than 18. Twenty-two states were still doing that in 2002.

In 2010, the high court ruled unconstitutional life without parole for crimes other than murder. But that does not comply with the convention, which bans life without parole for children for any crime.

According to Human Rights Watch, U.S. law still exempts children as young as 12 from working in agriculture “under dangerous conditions in violation of the convention’s prohibitions on the economic exploitation of children.”

U.S. leaders like to say the U.S. is the world leader on human rights. That claim is undermined by its failure to join the rest of the world in ratifying this convention.

Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached at joelauria@gmail.com .

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4 comments for “Why US Balks at Accord on Children’s Rights”

Milina Jovanovic

November 23, 2014 at 01:17

The topic of children’s human rights remains one of the most important social
issues to write about. It is widely recognized by many social theories, including
original Marxism, that the treatment of women and children constitutes the very best indicator of the main character of every society. This article is an excellent overview of the continuous and extreme violation of children’s rights in the U. S. It also describes the supreme hypocrisy that we all engage in when judging social
status and treatment of children across the globe, paying little attention to criminalization and dehumanization of generations of young people in the U.S. Mr. Lauria rightfully talks about the U. S.’ mockery of international treaties as another important indicator reflecting how the empire upholds and imposes its own ideology. While the U. S. government claims the necessity to engage in wars to “protect women and children” in other counties, the numbers of arrests of elementary school children are skyrocketing at home. New prisons are mushrooming in the U. S., often built for financial gains of private corporations, corrupted politicians, and judges. This is especially true when it comes to poor, black and brown children. Lauria reminded us to see “Kids for Cash” for a reason: the documentary tells a story about two Pennsylvania judges who worked to fill a private prison for a personal financial gain, by sentencing 3,000 children for minor offenses or behavioral problems. Most of Consortiumnews readers know that the U. S. government has never been serious about applying any international law to its own behavior, but this article is very timely and relevant to spark a discussion about what kind of future we can expect. When children are seen as commodities superexploted and abused as farm workers; permanently punished by a variety of social institutions for simply being children; when toddlers are perceived and treated as serious offenders; when we have enormous numbers of youth caught up in the system of criminal injustice, what can we say about ourselves as a society? From this
perspective, Lauria’s article is super important.

Boris M. Garsky

November 22, 2014 at 20:45

This is a disgrace to our reputation and posturing. We are at war for another country doing what we routinely do. These prisons are more than prisons; they are death chambers; they subject our youths to drugs and sexual molestation and deprivation; something they cannot hide from, refuse, or run from; they are a, literally, captive audience. These children are condemned to a life of crime, psychiatric trauma and illness; physical neglect and convoluted mentality. And how much is it costing the tax payer. The money could have easily and much more effectively been used to treat the children by providing housing, food and medical care. The person that built the for-profit prison along with the bought politicians and investors should be brought to justice.

bfearn

November 21, 2014 at 17:37

Thanks Joe,
A very telling situation that says a lot about American, so called, compassion, caring and willingness to protect the most vulnerable.